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What is it about ruins?

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When I walk through ruins, I always feel as if I’ve crossed a line, stepping into some place that’s neither now nor then, standing on uncertain ground. I love it.

There are three sets of ruins near where I live–the Salinas Pueblo Missions–near the center of New Mexico. They’re lodged in pinyon-juniper woodlands and shrubs in the foothills of the Manzano Mountains, in areas that have been inhabited since at least the 1100s.

Wildlife visit the ruins and are caught on the National Park Service’s minicams.

I’m drawn to write about other times and places, to travel not just in this wrinkle of time but to as many others as I can. In my writing, I can invent bleed throughs, so that the people in each when can meet and then see what happens.
Do you do the same thing?